Rear centre speaker placement in a 6.1 setup

Guest

I had tried to find articles on the net for a 6.1 speaker placement but not a lot of useful information. Hope you guys can help me out here.

I have a straight rear wall in a 4m (Width) x 6m (Length) room. Natually, both the rear surrounds will go to each end of the rear wall, so the rear centre will therefore go to the centre of the rear wall. My questions are:

(1) I read somewhere that in a 6.1 setup, it is strongly recommended to have the all the rear speakers in an arch. With my straight rear wall, this is not possible. Do I have to place the rear centre higher than both the surround speakers to create this "arch"? I don't have a high ceiling, so having an "arch" seems unlikely, if not much. Do you suggest that I just stick to a 5.1 setup?

(2) Does it make any sense to have a 6.1 setup with my room size?

(3) I will most probably be buying a Yamaha Receiver that supports 6.1 (RX-v730), does it have the capability to set the distance for the rear centre to the listening position, just like the surround speakers?

Guest

If it helps I have the surrounds on the side walls just infront of the seating positon, you can place them level/ just behind, these should be mounted between 60/90cm above ear level when seated. The surround back is positioned directly behind me approx 2m from seating postion, IMO any closer than 1m the results may not turn out so good, the speaker should be mounted a little higher than the surrounds, I would say no more than 30cm, then tilt the speaker downwards slightly.

I have great results with this set up, but as no two room are the same you may need to experiment a little.

Guest

My set up is only in a room 3m X 4m and I am using 6.1
I have the two rears mounted on the side walls at ear height when seated and the rear centre on the back wall at the same height about 1m from the seated area.